Just Start

“The hardest part of any journey is taking that first step.”
- Unknown

"JUST START." She said these words and looked at me with a coy smile. My friend Michelle and I were having coffee and I realized that she makes me nervous. Few people make me nervous. But she’s the dream-bigger, push-harder, do-the-thing kind of entrepreneur who I know will make it big. I adore our new, local friendship. I wish I was shorter so I could stand in front of her and look her square in the eye, but I also love that she is taller than me in her attitude. She pushes me - few people do that.

Michelle had just mentioned that she wanted to write about the journey of her wine shop but she worried others wouldn’t care. I responded with the blog post I wrote about how I had been scared to start my podcast for fear no one would care. We were in the same exact space - except that my doubt was met with her words of wisdom - JUST START.

How many times do we keep ourselves from taking that first step for so long and others lose out? Not us - THEM! Writing blog posts, creating a podcast - it’s not about the medium - it’s about the sharing of wisdom, knowledge, bumps & bruises, everything we know in order for someone else to learn from OUR mistakes and victories. If we don’t do the thing, they will end up looking elsewhere for answers. We’re doing them a disservice by being scared of the first step.

It makes me think back to being 28 and putting on my new sneakers, walking out the door and going for a jog. It was horrible. I was in a terrible space in life. I had every excuse of why I couldn’t run. But if I hadn’t taken that first step, I wouldn’t be able to run the 10k loop from Capitol Hill to the Lincoln Memorial now. My runs wouldn’t be inspiring to other people who don’t believe they can do the same thing I did. I had to do something really tiny in order to get to the point that I can run a Half Marathon without much training because it’s a part of my life now. I had to JUST START.

You know why it’s taken me so long to do this podcast? Sure, planning it and making sure it’s perfect are what I’ve admitted to so far - BUT here’s the real answer: I don’t want to learn a whole new technology. Yes, I designed, built and managed websites for 20 years, but at 35, I’m sick of trying to keep up with the latest and greatest. I need to learn how to record, edit, and launch this sucker. I have to admit that I don’t know how to do this and learn how. I have to JUST START. And I’m going to do that this week.